We’re in charge of bringing an appetizer for Thanksgiving, so on Sunday my husband grilled up 5 pounds of chicken wings (to freeze until Thursday). He usually sticks to a tried-and-true recipe which involves browning the wings, then basting them for a few hours with a concoction of butter, garlic and Franks Red Hot cayenne pepper sauce.
But this time, since we had a half a bottle of RedHot already opened, he decided to give them a little extra ZIP!
The result…is inedible. There’s waaay too much cayenne. It literally burns your lips.
Does anyone know a way that we can temper the cayenne pepper and salvage these wings? We’re open to re-grilling them, if necessary, but hope that we can maybe re-coat them with something that will cut the pepper.
I don’t think there’s enough cayenne to burn my tongue if I drank a whole bottle of Red Hot straight. Are you sure it’s the pepper and not the vinegar?
I agree with the others… just because they are too hot for you doesn’t mean others won’t enjoy them. Label them as something like “We Dare You Wings” and include plenty of Bleu Cheese Dressing and people will line up to take the challenge.
Try mixing up some honey with a little melted butter and coating over the wings with it. You’ll want them heated when you do this. The sugar in the honey should cut the heat down.
Hot pepper sensitivity is all over the map. I have no doubt Pundit Lisa’s family find it blazing hot. The usual way to temper Frank’s (and how to come up with levels of mild, medium, spicy, and suicide) is to vary the butter/margarine-to-Frank’s ratio. (In the case of suicide, and possibly spicy, additional hot stuff may be added.) When I’m making the sauce mild for someone, I’m using somewhere around a 3:2 to 1:1 margarine:Franks proportion. So if you’re proportions for that are far off, well, there you go.
Can you salvage them now? I think most of the hot pepper is soaked in by now.You can dip in blue cheese or ranch (if you prefer) and that will cut some of the heat as you eat.
You might be able to take a little of the edge off with something sweet, like apricot jam or a touch of honey, but I don’t think that will take that much of the edge off myself.
On edit: I see Zakalawe has got a similar idea, so you can try that. Also, there is a reasonable chance there will be others that will eat the wings as is.
How about a bath in a generous amount of buttermilk diluted with water?. Then a sweet glaze (honey or agave) and back to the grill to restore the carmelization.
The sugar/honey suggestion will work, but I’d only do half if I were you. Hot wings are popular for a reason! And besides, they’ll all think you did twice the work, to accommodate different tastes! Win!
Thanks for the advice. I’m going to try and find a sweet baste made with honey and re-cook them. If that doesn’t work, I’ll bring them and hope that some of my relatives are fans of cayenne.
Just keep in mind, nothing you add will really make them less hot. If you add honey, they’ll just be hot and sweet. You could try soaking them, as mentioned above, to see if some of the pepper comes off, but that may not do too much at this point.
And I’ll add one more voice to the chorus of people saying burning lips are part of the experience!
I’m with the “Frank’s is mild” camp, but I understand that capsaicin tolerance is all over the map. Blue cheese sauce and other dairy products help to clear the capsaicin from the receptors on the tongue. Avoid alcohol, unless you are a glutton for further punishment and love it!
That’s the exact opposite of everything I’ve heard, actually. I’ve always though dairy was not effective, but alcohol, in high quantities, is the only thing that might work.
Dairy which contains sufficient casein is effective, which includes milk.
Alcohol is only effective if the amount and concentration is high enough. At least 10 oz of 70 proof would be needed to dissolve the amount of capsaicin in 1 oz of decent strength capsaicin-based hot sauce. Which would be 6 chicken wings or less. Alcohol poisoning could result, if those relative proportions are adhered to. Lesser amounts of alcohol tend to just spread the capsaicin around, by making it just soluble enough to migrate to other sensitive tissue nearby.
Gotta go put on my leathers and ride my motorcycle now.
Personally I hate it when a pub’s hot wings is nothing but Frank’s. I just don’t like it. Take a decent barbeque sauce and toss some cayenne in it or something. Anything.
I understand the words individually, but they make no sense put in that order.